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Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard [Hardcover]

Chip Heath (Author), Dan Heath (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (94 customer reviews)
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Chip Heath and Dan Heath on Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

"Change is hard." "People hate change." Those were two of the most common quotes we heard when we began to study change.

But it occurred to us that if people hate change, they have a funny way of showing it. Every iPhone sold serves as counter-evidence. So does every text message sent, every corporate merger finalized, every aluminum can recycled. And we haven’t even mentioned the biggest changes: Getting married. Having kids. (If people hate change, then having a kid is an awfully dumb decision.)

It puzzled us--why do some huge changes, like marriage, come joyously, while some trivial changes, like submitting an expense report on time, meet fierce resistance?

We found the answer in the research of some brilliant psychologists who’d discovered that people have two separate “systems” in their brains—a rational system and an emotional system. The rational system is a thoughtful, logical planner. The emotional system is, well, emotional—and impulsive and instinctual.

When these two systems are in alignment, change can come quickly and easily (as when a dreamy-eyed couple gets married). When they’re not, change can be grueling (as anyone who has struggled with a diet can attest).

In those situations where change is hard, is it possible to align the two systems? Is it possible to overcome our internal "schizophrenia" about change? We believe it is.

In our research, we studied people trying to make difficult changes: People fighting to lose weight and keep it off. Managers trying to overhaul an entrenched bureaucracy. Activists combatting seemingly intractable problems such as child malnutrition. They succeeded--and, to our surprise, we found striking similarities in the strategies they used. They seemed to share a similar game plan. We wanted, in Switch, to make that game plan available to everyone, in hopes that we could show people how to make the hard changes in life a little bit easier. --Chip and Dan Heath

(Photo © Amy Surdacki)

From Publishers Weekly

The Heath brothers (coauthors of Made to Stick) address motivating employees, family members, and ourselves in their analysis of why we too often fear change. Change is not inherently frightening, but our ability to alter our habits can be complicated by the disjunction between our rational and irrational minds: the self that wants to be swimsuit-season ready and the self that acquiesces to another slice of cake anyway. The trick is to find the balance between our powerful drives and our reason. The authors' lessons are backed up by anecdotes that deal with such things as new methods used to reform abusive parents, the revitalization of a dying South Dakota town, and the rebranding of megastore Target. Through these lively examples, the Heaths speak energetically and encouragingly on how to modify our behaviors and businesses. This clever discussion is an entertaining and educational must-read for executives and for ordinary citizens looking to get out of a rut. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Crown Business; 1 edition (February 16, 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0385528752
  • ISBN-13: 978-0385528757
  • Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (94 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #78 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
    #1 in  Books > Business & Investing > Organizational Behavior > Organizational Change

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161 of 180 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Several sticky insights, February 16, 2010
This review is from: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Hardcover)

Chip and Dan Heath have once again summoned a lively writing style to present a series of compelling insights that make this book even more interesting as well as more valuable than its predecessor, Made to Stick. As they explain in the first chapter, "In this book, we argue that successful changes share a common pattern. They require the leader of change to do three things at once: To change someone's behavior, you've got to change that person's situation...[to cope with the fact that change] is hard because people wear themselves out. And that's the second surprise about change: What looks like laziness is often exhaustion...If you want people to change, you must provide crystal clear direction [because what] looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity." Throughout, the Heaths work within a narrative, best viewed as a "three-part framework," as they provide countless real-world (as opposed to hypothetical or theoretical] examples and - to their great credit - also provide a context or frame-of-reference for each.

Moreover, the Heaths invoke a few extended metaphors. The most important of these are the Rider (i.e. our rational side), the Elephant, (i.e. our emotional and instinctive side) and the Path (i.e. the surrounding environment in which change initiatives will be conducted). The challenge is to direct the Rider, motivate the Elephant, and shape the Path to make change more likely, "no matter what's happening with the Rider and Elephant...If you can do all three at once, dramatic change can happen even if you don't have lots of power or resources behind you."

Donald Berwick offers an excellent case in point. In 2004, in his position as a doctor and the CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), he had developed some ideas as to "how to save lives - massive numbers of lives" and his ideas were so well-supported by research that they were indisputable and yet "little was happening" until he spoke at a professional meeting and proposed six very specific interventions to save lives. Within two months, more than 1,000 hospitals had signed up. Eighteen months later, to the day (June 14, 2006) he had previously announced that he'd promised to return, he announced the results: "Hospitals enrolled in the 100,000 Lives Campaign have collectively prevented an estimated 122,300 avoidable deaths and, as importantly, have begun to institutionalize new standards of care that will continue to save lives and improve health outcomes into the future." He had directed his audience's Riders (i.e. hospital administrators), he had motivated his audience's Elephants by making them feel the compelling need for change, and he had shaped the Path by making it easier for the hospitals to embrace the change. The Heaths offer more than a dozen other prime examples (e.g. Jerry Sternin in Vietnam, the Five-Minute Room Rescue, "Fataki" in Tanzania) that also demonstrate how the same three-part framework resulted in the achievement of major changes elsewhere despite great difficulty.

Near the end of the book, the Heaths summarize the key points they have so thoroughly made while explaining to their reader how to make a switch. "For things to change, somebody somewhere has to start acting differently. Maybe it's you, maybe it's your team. Picture the person (or people). Each has an emotional Elephant side and a rational Rider side. You've got to reach both. And you've also got to clear the way for them to succeed." By now, the Heaths have explained how others have directed the Rider, motivated the Elephant, and shaped the Path. They conclude their book with a Q&A section during which they advise how to resolve twelve problems that people most often encounter as they fight for change. They suggest, and I agree, that this advice "won't make sense to anybody who hasn't read the book." The same can probably be said about much of what I have shared in this review.

Although, in my opinion, this is one of the most important business books published during the last several years, no commentary such as mine can do full justice to it. It simply must be read and read carefully, preferably then re-read carefully. Otherwise, it makes no sense to visit www.switchthebook.com/resources to obtain additional information and assistance.

I offer my congratulations to Chip and Dan Heath on a brilliant achievement. Bravo!
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44 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Keys for making change happen, from the grassroots on up, February 16, 2010
This review is from: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Hardcover)
I am a big fan of the Heath brothers' first book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die and I am happy to report that they have stepped up to the plate and hit another home run. As a writer and someone who works for social change, I found "Switch" to be even more engaging and applicable to my own work.

In "Switch," the Heaths once again take the kernel of a good idea originated by someone else and build an expansive original work around it. In "Made to Stick" that kernel was Malcolm Gladwell's concept of "stickiness," what makes ideas memorable. In "Switch" the core is psychologist and The Happiness Hypothesis author Jonathan Haidt's analogy for the mind: that the emotional side of our mind is like a headstrong Elephant, and the rational side of our mind is the guiding Rider. The Rider holds the reins and seems to be the leader, but we all know what it's like for an emotional Elephant to overpower a rational Rider. (For example, this is why many of us would say that a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream should be labeled one serving and not four. Once a worked up Elephant digs in, the Rider has a hard time reining her in. Um, speaking hypothetically, of course.)

Add in the third element to this framework, the Path, and you have three elements that can be worked on to address change. "Switch" addresses each of these elements in detail; Directing the Rider, Motivating the Elephant, and Shaping the Path, bringing in research-tested solutions and real-world success stories. What I liked best was the simplicity of many of the examples. To encourage people to "eat healthier," an initiative that could go in so many directions, rather than doing something complicated like following an illogically-designed government "Food Pyramid," a West Virginia initiative instead encouraged people to take one step, to buy 1% or skim milk. That is simple, and creates change at the level of purchasing behavior rather than altering drinking or eating behavior. (If the Ben & Jerry's isn't in the freezer in the first place, the Rider doesn't have to worry about controlling the Elephant.) And by narrowing the change down to one action, that eliminated choice paralysis and ambiguity that arise with more complicated directives.

"Switch" is a book for anyone from the grassroots, to cubicle nation, to CEOs. Most of the examples consciously focus on people who needed to effect significant change with little power and few resources available to them. How could a low-level NGO employee make a difference in alleviating the malnourishment of Vietnamese children, in only six months? By finding "bright spots," identifying children who were thriving, finding out what their mothers were doing differently, and spreading that knowledge to other families. Stories like this are both inspiring and practical for all of us. This is really what I appreciated most about "Switch." I found myself taking notes that were not only about the book itself, but about how I could apply this knowledge to challenges I am working on. The Elephant-Rider-Path metaphor helped me see my own work in a new light. What more can a reader ask for?
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255 of 309 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Like watching an infomercial, except that no product is being sold, February 27, 2010
By 1point21gigawatts (Arlington, VA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Hardcover)
This book is largely unhelpful to those who wish to "change" because it presents a framework that is too vague to be useful. In Switch, authors Chip and Dan Heath appear to have researched loads of success stories (in the individual, corporate, and government realms), and then attempted to create a framework for "change" based upon the similarities in those stories. But very few stories follow the framework closely, and the framework is too ambiguous to be useful. Motivate the elephant (i.e., our emotional side)? Shape the path?

What this book is really about is inspirational leaders and how they have accomplished change in nuanced situations that would rarely (if ever) apply to the most of the rest of us. For example, one (of many) stories discusses a South American railroad exec who turned his business around by focusing on short-term cash flow and reusing old rails. Inspirational? Yes. Useful? Probably not.

That's not to say that the book doesn't offer tidbits of information about what we generally know about change (for example, look to success stories, establish specific, well defined goals, set lofty, but not too lofty goals, etc.). But that's really nothing new, is it? Reading this book felt like watching an infomercial, except that no product was being sold. I really wanted to make some changes, but other than keeping in mind generally accepted principles of change, and some inspiration (derived form the numerous success stories in the book), I really wasn't in a better place than when I started.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard
A "must read" for anyone involved with change, trying to make change happen, or dealing with change. In other words, all of us. Read more
Published 22 hours ago by Bud Michael

4.0 out of 5 stars Switch Your Mind
Creative, well referenced help, for anyone looking to make personal or corporate changes. Using an analogy of a rider steering an elephant down a path, the Heath brothers present... Read more
Published 4 days ago by GTO

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly Powerful Concepts to "Encourage" Change
The new book SWITCH by Chip Heath & Dan Heath (who also wrote MADE TO STICK) is full of fascinating case studies of how people used the concepts in this book to "encourage"... Read more
Published 11 days ago by Phyllis Zimbler Miller

5.0 out of 5 stars Switch review
Excellent book -- simple way to break down complex issues and concerns as organizations go about changing -- ANYTHING
Published 11 days ago by Bob Curry

4.0 out of 5 stars Switching the terms on change management
SWITCH differs radically from the vast majority of change management texts. It starts from the same initial premise: change is difficult to implement. Read more
Published 13 days ago by Douglas Brown

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Switch is a great book -- one or two levels above the usual pop-psych, pop-business improvement books. Read more
Published 18 days ago by Dr. J. Zercher

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than it looks
Though it looks, and reads, like your typical psycho-babble business-improvement book, the Heath Brothers have put together a bunch of ideas that can actually help you make... Read more
Published 26 days ago by Ben Delaney

5.0 out of 5 stars Guiding Change Effectively

In Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, Chip Heath and Dan Heath give a road map for transforming an organization, a relationship, or a life. Read more
Published 28 days ago by James C. Jones

4.0 out of 5 stars Another good book from Heath Brothers
Excellent book, as Made to Stik, they provide good advice and tools to use and implement change in many fields.
Published 1 month ago by Javier Zarate V

3.0 out of 5 stars Book Review
The order was placed and no notice was given for one copy that was not available. Too much time elapsed and I had to initiate an inquiry for the status of that copy. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Department Of Health

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